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A good friend and sometimes business partner of mine is, like myself, a second generation Canadian born into a real estate family. Mark’s father, like mine, turned to Real Estate to forge a better life for him and his family. Years ago, (beginning in the early 1990’s) when life did not seem nearly as busy as it does today, I used to tag along with Mark as he had coffee with his father at the old Co-op Diner on Speedvale... View Article

One time a man was walking along the beach and sees another man fishing in the surf with a bait bucket beside him. As he drew closer, he saw that the bait bucket had no lid and had live crabs inside. “Why don’t you cover your bait bucket so the crabs won’t escape?”, he said. “You don’t understand.”, the man replied, “If there is one crab in the bucket it would surely crawl out very quickly. However, when there are... View Article

My wife, during her career as a teacher, used to comment to me about the importance of a good school secretary in maintaining a smooth running school. She had experienced several, in her particular case, all female. A good one could be the benevolent caring motherly type one moment, and Margaret Thatcher the next. Staying on her good side was well advised whether you were a teacher or principal0. Circumvention was a strictly ‘at your own risk’ proposition. Businesses I... View Article

Justified or not, I bear a reputation for frugality. My wife feels it is justified…I feel it is not. In any case, I will admit that I have, at the very least, a dichotic relationship with money- or more precisely – parting with it. I generally think little about the price of menu items when at a restaurant, yet I will agonize over purchasing Campbell’s chicken broth instead of the no-name variety that might save me 50 cents.... View Article

Change comes reluctantly to me. If people have tendencies, mine has been that I am a slow adapter – the slightly indignant cousin of slow learner. I bought my first stereo – the kind that played records – about the same time that CDs came out. Today I own a CD player but not an ipod. I bought a great SLR camera together with rolls of Kodak film several years after digital cameras hit the market and my current cell phone has... View Article

In mid 2012 Katherine Mclaughlin of Thomasfield Homes presented to the the Guelph Developers Association a startling report on land availability. We presented the report to our office and it’s entirety is available to CBN members in our online library, but I will summarize it for you as follows: The subdivisions of a decade ago are a thing of the past – there will be no more predominantly single family home subdivisions created in the City of Guelph. Whether that... View Article

Once a year I sit down with our accountant, and go over the company year end books. It’s at these meetings where you hear how you are really doing, and not how you think you’re doing. Part of the conversation at these meetings invariably touches on expenditures. It is afterall, the duty of my accountant to be cautious when I am not. On the first such visit after Coldwell Banker Neumann Real Estate moved to 824 Gordon Street,... View Article

The American philosopher and bellwether of cultural conscience Bart Simpson was famous for his reaction to being caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar. When caught red handed and guilty beyond any reasonable doubt, he flatly panned “I didn’t do it.” When the Simpsons first aired over twenty years ago, his denials were meant to be humorously ridiculous. Today, they might seem more like a reasonable response when caught in a fib. Bart came to mind this week as I... View Article

Access to the knowledge of others has always been one of the my favourite aspects of my job. After all, if you subscribe to the belief that everyone knows something that you don’t, the benefit of working with other people willing to share their knowledge and experiences is a tremendous advantage. It is, or at least, ought to be an advantage enjoyed by larger offices. If on the other hand, you find yourself working within a large group unwilling to... View Article

An occasional benefit of my job is that I get to attend golf tournaments while I ought to be working. The golfing industry, and many business people, have made a valiant attempt to link golf with work by helping the addicted convince themselves that there is some business benefit to five hours of doing nothing. If anything, watching grown adults waste five hours of daylight should convince the undecided not to do business with us. The notion of doing business... View Article

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